The Bahamas is home to more than 700 islands and cays; remote workers and students can live off 16 of them, including Eleuthera (pictured).
Sylvain Sonnets | Image Gallery | Getty Images
A message from Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce be seen On the pier of this tiny (5 square miles) island, tourists who gather at bars to watch the stunning sunset are bewildered, while locals are frustrated and fear their little paradise is turning into the next St. Barts.
“I heard she lives on the street,” a woman sitting alone at the bar told us. She gleefully drank perfectly chilled Prosecco from a champagne flute.
The locals seemed unmoved.
One shopkeeper told us: “It’s the two percent who come, and they’re the super rich.” He pointed out that wealthier Americans, Canadians and British people are the backbone of the economy here, and business has always been booming.
Maybe too brisk.
“There are 20 billionaires on this island alone. The traffic has become unbearable,” she said, looking at me quizzically.
I straightened up and tried to look like one of the two percenters, but I wasn’t sure what they would look like.
transportation? What traffic? I looked out the window of her shop. Most people drive around in golf carts. Harbor Island and its only town, Dunmore Town, have a population of just 1,800, making St. Barts (pop. 11,000) look like midtown Manhattan.
She explained that the woman herself had moved to Eleuthera, a 10-minute water taxi ride away and apparently rarely visited by locals.
All of which begs the question: Why would anyone come to this little place, let alone Taylor Swift and a bunch of billionaires?
Why are there so many huge yachts moored at Valentine’s Day Marina?
you can’t fly here
Harbor Island is not really an island. It’s an off-island island, in this case Eleuthera, about 60 miles northeast of Nassau. You can’t fly in. You have to fly to Eleuthera, take a taxi to a marina a few miles away, and then take a water taxi to Harbor Island.
Apparently this inaccessibility is a major selling point for the small group of people who can fit in on the island, and be able to pay the hefty (St. Barts-style) price.
The key word is “tiny”. The largest hotel has 41 rooms; a dozen other hotels have fewer. The total number of hotel rooms on the entire island will not exceed 250. You’re unlikely to see large global chains opening stores here. I doubt the infrastructure can support a large hotel. Not surprisingly, the few houses on the island seem to be doing a brisk rental business.
Spend a few days in the town, though, and you’ll understand why a small group of travelers keep coming back and seem to have no interest in expanding the town:
- Pink Beach: This is one of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean and possibly the world. It does appear pink due to the decaying shells of tiny sea creatures. It remains white, hundreds of feet offshore, no seaweed, no rocks, nothing but blue water. The terrain is flat and the sand is dense so you won’t sink in when walking. It’s so dense that people can ride horses up and down the entire three miles.
- Restaurant: How can an island with only a few hundred tourists support so many great restaurants? There’s Queen Conch or Ma Ruby, which serves delicious Caribbean cuisine and is famous for its “cheeseburger in heaven” (it’s served on a brioche bun and is said to have earned praise from Jimmy Buffett). Aquapazza offers delicious Italian cuisine, while the Coral Sands Hotel’s Latitude 25, the elegant Dunmore Hotel, the stylish all-cabana Pink Sands Resort’s Malcolm 51, and the Rock House offer classic Caribbean meats and Fish dishes. Log in, or on Valentine’s Day. And many nights you still can’t get a reservation.
- house: You might think that an island with so many wealthy visitors and residents would be filled with huge mansions and compounds spanning acres of land. Of course they are here. The captain we hired for a day trip quipped: “Millionaires live on the north side, billionaires live on the south side, and everyone else lives in the middle.” It is said that Bill Gates, Ron Perlman, Mickey Drakes Le, Barry Diller, Diane von Furstenberg and Wayne Huizenga, among others, have made their homes here. But the town of Dunmore is filled with modest one- and two-story houses that burst with color: blue, yellow, red, a veritable explosion of pastels, and the ubiquitous purple petunias.
- church: If you take a walk on Sunday, you can hear singing. It is a religious country: 90% of the people belong to some religious denomination, but are mainly Protestant (Baptist and Anglican), with Roman Catholics and a few Jehovah’s Witnesses, Greek Orthodox, etc. We went to the Lighthouse Church of God and listened to Pastor Samuel Higgs and guitarist Rocky Sanders and a bunch of heavenly singers rock the house with old-school gospel music. Mick Jagger and Lenny Kravitz were there, too. Higgs and Saunders played for clubs in Europe before returning to the Island.
- people: The people of the Bahamas are known for their warm and friendly people, and on such a small island, this warmth comes through in full force. Just say “good morning” to anyone and they’ll stop and say, “Good morning! How are you?” They’ll smile, and they mean it.
Two percent: can’t live with them, can’t live without them
While locals may complain about traffic and wealthy people, don’t expect a Bahamian government shutdown. Tourism accounts for 50% of the country’s GDP and employs nearly 70% of the workforce. Thanks to cash infusions, per capita income ranks third in the Western Hemisphere (after the United States and Canada).
Luxury travel may be booming, but overall tourism in the Caribbean remains strong. According to Caribbean Daily, a recent report released by the Caribbean Tourism Organization showed that arrivals increased by 14.3% last year.
Although the locals may complain, any small island or city will kill to gain the fierce loyalty that a place like this engenders.
The lady at the Valentine’s Day bar said she had been coming here for 20 years and spent her honeymoon here. She arrived in Eleuthera on a private jet with her husband, who owns a car dealership in the Midwest, their children and their friends. They rented a boat to spend a few weeks in the Bahamas before heading south to smaller islands.
Why is she sitting at the bar alone?
She laughed and said her family was looking for Swift.
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